prune picker

This is the blog of a prune picker. (Native born Californian) Retired oilfield. I am an old man. (91) I blog a lot about my body and getting old. As I approach death life gets more interesting. More interesting is not good. I still drive. I attend sports, music, and civic events. I am writing my memoirs. I attend swim class three times a week. Some of my blogs might be interesting. A lot of my blogs are silly and trivial. None are very long.

Monday, February 17, 2014

(Child 1) I am born. Thanks to Mom and Dad.

This will be the first sentence of my Life Story.

Being born is a good place to start, huh? My mother gave
birth to me at home on 1129 East Kingsley Avenue in Pomona, California on July
20, 1925. Home was a house in an orange orchard. I understand that I weighed 12
pounds. I was the ninth of nine children. All nine were at home. Within a year
or so my oldest sister was to marry. Our home was full of people.

There is a fact from my babyhood that has been told to me. I
became an uncle when I was 21 days old. My second oldest sister, Thelma, gave
birth to my nephew Donald. Thelma had a good supply of breast milk and would
nurse me when my mother was gone. This was told to me when I was a teenager and
I was mortified with embarrassment. Later I got over it and was kinda proud of
this fact. This fact must explain my magnificent physical condition.

As an exercise I have written down every memory that I have
of my mother. This is essentially my memory of my first five years of life. My
last memory of my mother was when I was four years old and she was being taken
to the hospital. It was 1929. She was in the back seat of an open sided sedan.
Someone was holding me up so she could tell me good by.

Mother needed a baby sitter. She enrolled me into
kindergarten a year early. Yes, I had two years of kindergarten. That might
explain my intelligence. I can remember in kindergarten lying down on the floor
to take a nap. I turned my head sideways and saw my mother sitting in a chair
looking at me.

My first kindergarten was on Fifth Street. Our home then was
on South Gibbs. I would walk home. At four years old it was a long way. When I
got home mother would fix us a snack.

I remember mother fixing everyone breakfast and getting them
off to work. Then mother would fix breakfast for her and I.

One time I was a bad boy. I did not make a habit of doing
that. Mother told me to go into the yard and get a switch. She told me to trim
all the leaves off except for some on the end of the switch. I remember the
sense of doom and authority that I felt as I picked out a switch for use on me.
Mother then switched me the back if my legs. I will never forget that time. I
suspect that it only happened once.

This next item is not a memory of my mother but was while
she was still alive. My nephew Donald lived with us. I thought that he had been
mean to me. I can remember being under a table. I had Donald by the head and
was banging his head into the floor. I can remember being happy and enjoying
myself. I can remember adults rescuing him. However they sympathized with me.

I was in a theatre downtown with my mother. There was a
demonstration of cooking stoves on the stage. Later my Mother carried me in her
arms to go up on the stage to get a close look at the stoves. I had seen the
curtains part at the start of the demonstration. I was terrified that the
curtains were going to close and trap us behind them. I had a crying fit until
we left the stage. I was really scared.

I remember a pleasant time with strawberries. My mother
loved strawberry shortcake and occasionally that is all we had for supper. She
would make a huge bowel of strawberry slurry. Strawberries, milk, and a little
sugar. I can remember the bowel. It had blue enamel with white flecks. Then she
made a huge supply of shortcake. The shortcake was not sweet. It was like a
fluffy biscuit. We had all we wanted. I can remember that my parents and
siblings surrounded the table. My oldest sister would have been married and
moved away by then. There was a large happy group. I think that we all liked
strawberry shortcake. My father was on my right.

I have listed seven memories of my mother. There are maybe
three or four more memories. These are also about all I remember of my
childhood up to the age of five. I define my childhood as the time between my
birth and the passing of my mother. I was five when my mother passed away. I
remember being held in a crowded room with my mother in a coffin. I had no
conception of death. I was not sad. I noted all the people crying.

Since then I have developed an appreciation of death. I have
been very sad about the death of my mother. I have felt deep envy of people who
had their mothers for a long time. I have felt a deep resentment to the loss of
my mother. I really feel empathy for any person who has lost a parent.

Charles Elbert Monson

Remarks about my Life
History.

I suspect that it will take several hundred posts to write
my Life History. It probably will take a year or so. I plan to write about
everything that I can remember from my life. I will condense a lot, but it will
still be long winded. You will able to recognize a Life History post, the title
will start with a word and a number enclosed in parentheses.

I have a good start already. I have written 26
posts about my three years in the Army. This would indicate several hundred
posts for the rest of my Life Story. I enjoy the researching and the memory
trips. I hope that you might enjoy some of the stories.

My niche in the Blogosphere.

My blog is about me, my family, my interests, my opinions, and my daily activities. My name is Chuck Monson. I am a native born Californian. I worked in the oil exploration and production business and am now retired and living in Ruston, Louisiana. I am a 91 year old widower. I blog because I really enjoy it. Posting gives me a schedule and is a wonderful make work project. I like pictures, both the taking and looking at them. I really like old historic pictures. I enjoy a good photograph. I like putting pictures and text together in a way that is hopefully interesting to others and that will be interesting to me in the future. I like to be silly now and then. It is also putting my memories down on paper. My blog serves as a diary. I have used it for a reference quite a few times.

I do mix it up. Some of my blogs are “what I had for breakfast”, some are just pictures, some are items of genealogical nature, and there are items from my family history. I have a history of the Munson/Monsons in America. The study of this history has led me to the discovery of much American history that had previously been unknown by me.

I have had a lifelong interest in history, archeology, philosophy, religion, politics, architecture, technical subjects, music, food, and sports. I spend time every day reading blogs and posting to my blog. I do not pontificate on religion or politics because I do not consider myself wise enough to try to persuade others to my beliefs. My beliefs are quite nebulous anyway.

I was started on blogging by my late son, Christopher David Monson. Chris wrote the blog "snaggletoothie of the Loyal Opposition" There is a link to his blog above. I look at Chris's blog often. I have read most of his posts.

My adult years.

I married Jackie Lois Ireton in 1944 in San Luis Obispo, California. I met her on a blind date when I was taking amphibious training at Moro Bay. We have been blessed with four children, nine grand children, and nine great grandchildren. They are an exceptional group. I love them and I am proud of them.

I was an army combat engineer (infantry with shovels) during World War II. I served in the Pacific. I was wounded on Peleliu Island helping the marines on Bloody Nose Ridge. I was shot in both legs just above the knees. The wound locations indicate that I was not running away.

I received a BSME in 1950 from Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, California. Jackie received a PHT. (pushing husband through.) I retired from oilfield work in 1985. Jackie and I moved into a fifth wheel trailer and enjoyed the RV lifestyle until Jackie's health failed. We traveled across the continent 3 1/2 times. We spent a summer as volunteers at Acadia National Park. For 17 years we helped build an Escapee RV park in Chimacum, Washington. Jackie passed away in 2007. We had been married 63 years. We were married on June 3, 1944. I still live in our fifth wheel trailer. It is parked in the yard of my daughter Kerry's home in Ruston, Louisiana. It is by far the nicest RV park that I have ever lived in.

1957 Family Photo.

My teen age years.

I was born in 1925 in Pomona, California. Pomona is on the east edge of Los Angeles County. It is halfway between Los Angeles and San Bernardino and halfway between the mountains and the beach. I thought that it was great to be an hour from snow covered mountains and an hour from the ocean surf.

In my days of growing up, Pomona was completely surrounded by orchards and truck farms. Oranges, lemons, grapefruit, peaches, apricots, olives, persimmons, and walnuts. Watermelons and strawberries. During the depression I had many meals from the orchards.

They say that you cannot go back home. That is true of the Pomona Valley of my youth. Because it is no longer there. Most of it is now covered with asphalt and stucco buildings.

Pomona Valley in 1925 from the South Hills. Old Baldy in the background.

My ancestors.

I am getting more and more into genealogy. I have a trove of information on the Munsons/Monsons. My father is buried in California. His father by adoption (He was an uncle.) is buried in Kansas. His natural father is buried in Kentucky. So I have two grandfathers. I have a grandfather and four great grandfathers buried in Kentucky, one great buried in New Jersey, and three greats buried in Connecticut. I have two greats buried in Rattlesden, Suffolk, England. I have been led to believe that my ancestors before that came from Denmark and Normandy.

Captain Thomas Munson was the first Munson to move to America. He was baptized in Rattlesden, England in 1612. The baptismal font is still in use. He served in the militia in the Pequot Indian Wars in 1637. He served in the militia all his life and reached the status of Captain. His signature is on the founding document for New Haven, Connecticut.

In 2011 I visited New Haven and took pictures of his gravestone. In May 2012 my oldest daughter Nancy Ann escorted me to England and France. We visited Rattlesden and I took some pictures of the Captain's baptismal font.

Why is the old prune picker living in Ruston, Louisiana?

In 2006 my wife Jackie was in poor health. Jackie had kidney failure and was on dialysis. She had heart problems for some time with A-fib. She had fallen and broken her hip. She had broken ribs and vertebra just moving around normally. My family thought that I needed help caring for Jackie. My daughter Kerry and her husband John offered to park our trailer in their backyard in Ruston and help. Jackie and I accepted their kind offer. My daughter Nancy accompanied Jackie in an airplane flight from the Olympic Peninsula in Washington to Ruston. My son Mike took time off to help me pull our trailer for five long days to our new home. We were and are grateful. We enjoyed our new home very much.

Unfortunately and sadly, Jackie passed away in six months. I had sold our truck and was permanently parked. I was ready to give up full time RVing anyway. It is very pleasant in Ruston and I am close to family. So that is why I have been living in Ruston, Louisiana since October 2006.